Barnaby Part 13

Julia reappeared by herself, on her face what Kitty Drake stigmatized as a maddening consciousness.

"They say they are going to ride in their shirt-sleeves," she said, "but that will hardly make them visible. It's nearly pitch dark outside."

"They are idiots," said Kitty Drake. "Fancy Gregory calling to us when we were upstairs to know if we would lend them our night-dresses. I told him I was too thrifty."

"Why not?" said Julia. "Barnaby can have mine."

A blank pause saluted her speech, and then, with one accord, the women began to acclaim the notion as if it were the most ordinary thing in the world. Even Kitty, in her haste to dissipate the impression that Julia's declaration might make on the girl beside her, caught up the idea and made it hers. She flew up and down arranging.

"A bit mediaeval, isn't it?" said Kilgour, watching the riders as they struggled with gossamer raiment that sometimes flopped over their heads una.s.sisted, and sometimes clung, entangling them in cobwebs.--"In the days of knighthood we all wore bits of our ladies' clothing."

The d.u.c.h.ess grumbled.

"Pity we can't revive other habits," she said. "There was a useful practice of wringing obnoxious people's necks."

"Poor Julia," said Kilgour. "Don't grudge her her little triumph. She only wants to publish it abroad that it was her own fault she was forsaken."

But the d.u.c.h.ess's brow was grim.

The night was black and starless, and had been still. The villages they pa.s.sed gave back startled echoes, awakened out of sleep by the rattling of the cavalcade. Susan was tucked in between Kitty Drake and the d.u.c.h.ess, who intended to change to her horse when the race began, and in the meantime was driving them at a smacking pace. She kept her buggy at the head of the procession, and was the first to whisk round a perilously sudden turning that led off the turnpike, and sent them b.u.mping into a field.

In front of them stretched a dim line of country that had darkened into strangeness, puzzling the most familiar eyes. Here and there were flickering lights, like will-o'-the-wisps, luring and warning, indicating danger. And the men were to ride there....

Susan stood up in the buggy, supported by Kitty's arm, straining her eyes to watch the start. She could make out a little; by dint of hard gazing she learnt to distinguish the figures that moved yonder. In the middle of the field an indistinct line of riders were drawn up, waiting.

A man shouted back to the watchers, and their prattle hushed. There was an instant of absolute silence, suspended breath;--and then somebody swung a lantern.

"Go!" he cried.

Leaping into the darkness the line of horses broke like a wave and went, their limbs gleaming. Already they were blundering into the first hedge, and there was a crash, relieved by laughter as the first spill resulted in one man picking himself up unhurt. The rest were swinging on; rising again, more warily, a little farther; and just visible, for the last time, black objects against the sky.

The d.u.c.h.ess set her foot in the stirrup and galloped off. Susan rocked as she stood, and was nearly flung out as the buggy started forward, and the whole cavalcade whirled blindly into a lane that was all ruts and stones and turf.

Strange what an unimagined wildness darkness and ignorance lent to that plain strip of country. The fields that slanted were dreadful hills sinking into unknown abysses, the brooks rushed like rivers, the hedges lifted themselves gigantic. Many who had ridden over the ground by daylight times without number exclaimed, and wished the night at an end.

Kitty Drake, however, was screaming with delight.

"Here they come!" she shrilled. "Oh, shut up, you people. You'll scare the horses. I know it's awfully weird, but still--! That's d.i.c.ky, of course. I'd know Nanny's frills anywhere; he looks like a mad pierrot. Oh, and Colonel Birch, with Mrs. Uffington's chiffon scarf tied on to him. Mrs. Uffington, it was base of you not to risk it. My best garment is floating there, being torn to ribbons by Gregory's spurs."

"Sit down, Kitty!" cried somebody at her elbow. "You can't see anything yet; it's all imagination."

"I see it with my mind's eye," she declared; but subsided.

A few men on horseback scampered out of the nothingness and drew up beside them. This was the place to watch the riders jump the water.

They pressed close in a peering bunch, the cigars in their mouths making red points in the gloom. The d.u.c.h.ess halted by the buggy, a curious figure in Gregory Drake's greatcoat, with the sleeves turned up.

"All right, so far," she said, in her gruff voice, cheerily. "They have been signalling with the lanterns. Queer how the darkness seems to swallow 'em up alive!"

As she spoke they all heard a distant thudding. There was something terrifying in this invisible approach; it seemed to promise catastrophe. Surely some sudden end would come to that beating of horses' hoofs--! Nearer and nearer the unseen racers came, until they were almost on the top of the watching throng. Then there was a glimpse of great beasts rising in the air.

The first horse came down short of the landing-place, plunging into the hidden water that ran beneath. His splash was followed by another as the next man faltered and went in deep. Then a third went up.

Someone had an acetylene motor lamp, and held it suddenly on high. It made a vivid glare, illuminating that rider's face, his eyes staring ahead, his mouth shut and smiling----

"Turn out that lamp. You'll dazzle 'em, you d.a.m.ned idiot!" yelled Kilgour. "It isn't a pantomime!"

The next horse had taken fright. There was stamping and swearing; and then the blinding flare was extinguished, leaving the scene darker.

The faces that had shone pale and unearthly in that brief wave of limelight could not longer be recognized.

Susan shivered with excitement. That was Barnaby she had seen....

No woman was in his head just then; his spirit was intent on the splendid peril of that night ride. Something in herself understood him. She felt proud of him, reckless with him, afraid of nothing. But he had landed and was away on the farther side.

Now they were all in or over, and the water jump was deserted. The last who had failed to clear it had struggled up the bank and swung dripping into his saddle, feeling for his reins. They were laughing at him because he had let go and tried to swim, not at first realizing that it wasn't up to his knees....

But he had lost his head in the dark.

There was time, if they hurried, to reach the hillside at the back of the intervening dip, full of pitfalls, and gain a place of vantage to witness what they might of the finish. Kilgour, who knew the country blindfold, pushed on ahead, guiding them; and the rest trusted to his instinct. He unlatched a gate, flinging it wide for the others to scramble through, cut along close under the branching side of a spinney, forded a water-course, and spun up a cart track; emerging suddenly on the side of the hill. Behind him pressed a clattering, jolting troop, that stopped dead as he threw up his arm and listened.

The riders had to make a circuit, but they should be near. What was the meaning of this long pause? of the utter silence? For the first time the women betrayed a nervous thrill that was not pure excitement.

The waiting dashed their spirits. They tried to laugh, and their laughter sounded strange.

"There's bound to be some misfortune," muttered someone, as a night bird croaked in the trees. And above the hush a woman's voice pealed, hysterical, calling on heaven to witness that she had dissuaded Billy----

"Hush!"

The men who were judging talked in whispers as they sat quietly on their horses, motionless, save for an occasional jingling bit, under the clump of firs that was the winning-post. Their ears were on the alert, but all the queer noises of the night were treacherously alike, and that might be nothing but running water that seemed a distant galloping. One man looked at his watch.

"They're due," he said. "Bar accidents. Can't you hear 'em?"

Then at last, clear in the distance, the gallop came.

Far in that mysterious valley the lanterns twinkled, making the darkness visible. Where the lights glimmered there was danger.

"D'you see that?" said Kilgour in the ear of his neighbour. A spark dipped suddenly.--"One man down."

At the next jump another light went out.

"A bit weird, these signals," said Kilgour's neighbour. "I don't like 'em; it's too infernally suggestive. Where are they now?"

The watchers herded together, all standing up, all staring; trying to pierce the gloom, as the unseen horses came thundering up the rise.

Singly they ran in.

Susan was sure that Barnaby would win. She could not understand why her heart beat so loud.

"One--two--three--!"

They were all frantically counting. Five men still up;--but not yet near enough to distinguish faces.